Click through the gallery to see some of the biggest performers coming to the Alamo City.
Click through the gallery to see some of the biggest performers coming to the Alamo City.
Jan. 10, AT&T Center
Jan. 10, AT&T Center
The group of donors set to take over operations of the San Antonio symphony has backed out of the deal after discovering a potential $8.9 million pension liability, leaving the future of the orchestra in doubt.
“We thought we had gotten to the finish line. Then they said there might be an unfunded portion of their pension plan,” said Bruce Bugg Jr., chairman of Symphonic Music for San Antonio, a nonprofit set up by major donors to take over the symphony’s operations. “We were hoping to have the transition completed by now. We felt like we were pretty far along. Everything ground to a halt at that point.”
The board that’s currently running the symphony will meet Tuesday to discuss the impact on the current season and future of the orchestra, said Chairwoman Alice Viroslav. The Symphony Society of San Antonio has been running the orchestra since 1939 and was supposed to relinquish control to the new group earlier this year.
“I have to get the board together and allow them to discuss all options,” she said when asked whether bankruptcy was on the table. “This isn’t a positive development. This is very surprising for all of us. Not a pleasant surprise for anyone.”
San Antonio supermarket chain H-E-B, the Tobin Endowment and the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation set up the nonprofit and announced plans in July to take over the symphony’s assets and operations from the Symphony Society by Sept. 1. Although they donated about $2 million to keep the symphony going since May, the transfer never happened as the donor group struggled to get a handle on the orchestra’s liabilities, they announced Wednesday.
Bugg said in an interview that they formally terminated the arrangement with the Symphony Society on Dec. 21.
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“They’re just going to have to work through this on their own,” he said. “These liabilities are insurmountable for us to go forward.”
The American Federation of Musicians & Employers’ Pension Fund sent the organizations a letter Nov. 21 that showed the orchestra’s pension plan was underfunded by the Symphony Society by about $4.5 million, according to a copy of the letter. It’s not a bill that’s necessarily due now. It basically means the symphony owes more on its current and future retirement payouts than it has in its account — $4.5 million more.
Withdrawing from the fund early, however, would trigger a “withdrawal liability” of more than $8.9 million, the federation said.
The symphony, which has struggled financially for years and was at risk of collapse last year, thought it had paid off almost all of its debt when the board discovered the pension liability in August, Viroslav said.
“It wasn’t in any of the previously audited statements, and we’re not sure why,” she said.
The organizations were reviewing the musicians’ employment plan this summer when the pension plan was discovered.
“As we were learning more and peeling back the layers of how the organization was working, we uncovered a lot of surprises,” said Dya Campos, vice chairwoman of the donor-backed group. “There were a lot of financial surprises that our group uncovered.”
The musicians’ current contract expires on Sunday, and the orchestra’s labor union filed charges Dec. 18 against the old and new boards with the National Labor Relations Board for failing to negotiate in good faith, said Brian Petkovich, a bassoon player and the secretary of the local chapter of the American Federation of Musicians labor union.
The union said it refused a demand from Tom Stephenson, the executive director of the new organization, for pay cuts for new musicians and he refused to continue negotiations.
They accused the new team in a statement Wednesday of using the pension plan as a “false excuse” to abandon contract talks, pointing out that there wouldn’t be a withdrawal liability of $8.9 million if the they take over the plan.
The new “board members spent months proclaiming themselves the saviors of the San Antonio Symphony,” the union said in a statement. “Now, like spoiled children, they have decided to pick up their marbles and leave because they couldn't get their way on everything, including having to deal with a pesky union that didn't think reducing outstandingly skilled musicians' already-low pay scales was a very good idea.”
The San Antonio Symphony’s next concert, a Tricentennial celebration, is scheduled for Jan. 6 at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts. About 40 performances remain on the symphony’s 2017-’18 schedule.
dkopecki@express-news.net
Joshua Fechter contributed to this article.